


so war es und so ist es

by Imkerin



Category: Football RPF, German National Football Team RPF
Genre: 2005-2009, Alternate Universe - No Wives No Kids, FC Bayern München, First Time, M/M, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-07 05:13:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5444543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imkerin/pseuds/Imkerin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re welcome, Schweini,” Lukas says, “you fucking dick,” and then, because he’s already seen the future and they’re invincible, immortal, eternal, when Schweini leans in to give him another slobbery smack on the cheek he turns his head and catches it full on the lips instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so war es und so ist es

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nahco3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/gifts).



> Thanks so much to spock and ascience for their amazing help!

**_29 june 2005_ **

"We were good," Schweini says, slurring just a little. His arm is wrapped around Lukas’s shoulders, his body a heavy, hot, unbalanced weight against his side, one that Lukas doesn't mind at all. "We were so good, Poldi."

"Yeah," Lukas says, because they had been, so much better than last year, and third -- third's not so bad, not with a goal each and three more on top of that beforehand, and the world cup coming next year: it's like he can see exactly what’s going to happen -- how can they _not_ be called up, after this?

Schweini must be thinking the same thing because he says "So good," again, and leans over into Lukas even more, sending both of them staggering lopsidedly into the wall. He kisses him messily on the cheek, like they're celebrating and about to get buried under six other guys except it's just them here alone in the hotel hallway, three doors down from their room and the only cheering is the same noise that’s been stuck in Lukas’s brain all night, all evening, ever since they left the field.

His breath is hot, reeking of beer so strong you could practically get drunk yourself just by smelling it, but his face is still so close Lukas can feel the lopsided twist of his grin, the sheer joy radiating off of him, and it’s fine, he doesn’t mind at all. “So good,” he agrees, and joins Schweini’s delighted laugh as he pushes them off the wall and back more or less-upright, Schweini clinging tighter to him as they go, making it more difficult on purpose.

When they get there finally, after what it feels like a year in itself, and Lukas manages to wrestle the door open despite the 170-pound leech attached to his side, Schweini says “Oh, thanks, _Poldi_ ,” rolling his name dramatically, and doesn’t let go of him at all even when Lukas has to manhandle him out of the way to get the door shut behind them.

“You’re welcome, Schweini,” Lukas says, “you fucking dick,” and then, because he’s already seen the future and they’re invincible, immortal, eternal, when Schweini leans in to give him another slobbery smack on the cheek he turns his head and catches it full on the lips instead. It’s hot and slick and wet and tastes horrible and feels slightly less like a prank than he’d anticipated, like the weird intimacy of the hallway had somehow snuck into the room with them, through the cracks in the door, and wrapped itself around them both. It feels like a real kiss -- a shitty one, maybe, but real.

The situation clearly takes a moment to register in Schweini’s beer-soaked brain, but then he’s pulling back just a little, just enough to stare at Lukas as he sputters. Lukas expects him to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and then maybe knock him over the head or something, which he would accept as due justice, but he doesn’t; he doesn’t even let go. His eyes are wide and confused for a pretty comically long time, and when they finally clear he glances down to Lukas’s mouth and he says: “Hey-- hey, Poldi, do you want to--?”

It’s the first question Schweini’s ever asked him that Lukas hasn’t had an answer to. Even that’s not technically true, because he does have an answer, and it’s _we can’t, are you stupider than you look_ , but the words are stuck not even close to his throat, under his stomach somewhere, maybe. It’s probably not the right answer anyway, because when Schweini shifts towards him again again -- hesitantly, this time, slowly, telegraphing _this is real_ so clearly you could see it from the moon -- all rational thought deserts him, as if he _had_ got drunk off Schweini’s breath, and he leans right in to meet him halfway.

This time it’s better. Even drunk enough to baldly ask for the impossible, Schweini’s good at this, so good Lukas forgets, in the haze of teeth glossing over his lower lip and Schweini’s hand at the shockingly sensitive nape of his neck, that he’s supposed to be holding them both up until they’re half-falling, half stumbling to the nearest bed. The headboard slams against the wall, the mattress creaking loudly in protest under their weight, and next door Fringser bangs a fist into his side of the wall and yells, _shut up, you pair of idiots, do you know what time it is?_

Lukas does not know what time it is, because right now he’s pretty much only aware of two things: Schweini’s elbow digging into his ribs, forcing the air out of his lungs, and the rest of his weight heavy and hard between Lukas’s sprawled thighs. “Schweini,” he says, quiet enough with two kinds of breathlessness that he hopes it can’t be heard through the walls because he does not want anyone else hearing how that word, the name, suddenly sounds so different. He licks his lips, impossibly still tasting the beer, and finds he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Mmph,” Schweini answers, dragging his way up on top of Lukas, his elbow finally finding a more comfortable home in the sheets at Lukas’s side, until they’re face to face, their bodies flush. He watches Lukas’s mouth with embarrassing fascination, then kisses him again, long and slow, his tongue chasing Lukas’s. They’re both hard -- he can feel Schweini’s dick pressing into his hip, knows his own must be just as obvious -- and it’s maybe a little bit terrifying, even though there’s no way Lukas is going to back down first.

Fringser punches the wall again and Schweini says _oh fuck_ right into his mouth, so muffled by the tangle of their lips and tongues that even Lukas can barely understand him, and all at once the entire situation is so absurd that he’s laughing himself breathless again. Schweini wrinkles up his huge dumb nose comically, which makes it all even worse, and lifts himself up on his elbows to yell “Sorry!” back at the wall, cracking into a laugh of his own halfway through.

“Idiots,” Fringser says one more time, just barely audible over Schweini’s choked giggle. The over-exaggerated exasperation in his voice stretches Lukas’s grin wider, but he reaches up and puts his hand over Schweini’s mouth, shushing him.

That lasts for all of two seconds before Schweini licks his palm and he yelps too loudly in shock, which gets him Schweini’s hand over _his_ mouth, pushing his head back into the pillows, stopping him mid-breath. He can feel himself blushing, his cheeks burning under Schweini’s fingertips. But he’s still game, so he licks Schweini’s hand right back, the faint salt of his skin surprisingly mild on his tongue, and watches Schweini’s eyes go as wide as his own, feels the twitch of lips against his palm as Schweini either gasps or tries to say something or both.

For another long moment neither of them move, and then Schweini squirms up a little, resituating himself -- Lukas’s cock jumps at the friction, and he’s thankful for Schweini’s hand still clamped over his mouth -- and gets one of his legs right between Lukas’s, then rocks down, shoving his dick against Lukas’s left thigh.

Schweini’s hand mostly muffles the noise Lukas makes, and the rest is almost entirely drowned out by the blood rushing in his ears. They’ve still got all their clothes on, the whole thing is ridiculous -- but Schweini is so heavy, so solid on top of him that he bucks up against him almost involuntarily, wanting more than the steady weight of Schweini’s thigh against his own dick. “Fuck,” he says into his hand, “oh fuck, Schweini.”

He can’t really understand himself and Schweini probably can’t either, but he mumbles something in reply anyway and thrusts again, smoother this time, a movement that doesn’t stop, that leads into another and another. Lukas throws his free arm over Schweini’s back, holding him steady on top of him, and hangs on as best he can, rutting up against him and letting his eyes close as it gets hotter between them, his dick sliding against his belly in the slick of precome soaking his underwear. He wonders if Schweini can feel the mess through his clothes, feel how much he wants it, how much he’s enjoying being pinned under him, and shudders, thrusting harder.

It’s hard to remember to breathe through his nose, hard to get enough air when he does, but he doesn’t want Schweini’s hand anywhere but where it is, even though the image of his fingers wrapped sloppily around Lukas’s dick is almost too much to think about. They can do that later-- there’s always going to be a later, for them, and the certainty of that, the lightheadedness, an extra-enthusiastic jerk of Schweini’s hips, and Lukas is coming in his pants with a muffled yell that, in the back of his mind, he really, really hopes won’t bring the wrath of Frings down on them, because there’s no way they can get cleaned up in time to answer the door if anyone comes to shout at them.

His eyes pop open again as Schweini bites into the ball of his thumb without warning, a dull spike of pain cutting through the last hazy shivers of orgasm and pulling him back just in time to see Schweini’s eyes go unfocused and distant, to feel the way Schweini strains against him. He looks every bit the idiot but it makes Lukas’s heart stutter violently anyway. Without really thinking about what he’s doing, he smooths his hand down the small of Schweini’s back and grabs his ass, pulling him down and pressing his thigh harder between Schweini’s legs at the same time. A couple more quick, jerking thrusts, and he’s done-- Lukas can feel the tension peak and release through every inch of his body, all tangled together like this, not just the muscles under his hand-- and slumping bonelessly down, his dead weight somehow even heavier now than before.

Schweini kisses Lukas’s palm, lips moving against the bite mark he’s left there, and Lukas slowly takes his hand away, not knowing what to expect. His smile is dazed and soft as he blinks down at Lukas, but all he says is: “‘Night, Poldi,” followed by a yawn. Shifting his hand from Lukas’s mouth up into his hair, he wipes the spit off in it, lays his head down on Lukas’s chest, and is asleep before Lukas can think to protest.

 

**_28 october 2006_ **

The smell of butter and salt drags Lukas awake, back to the uncomfortable reality of his slightly chilly, lonely apartment. He scrubs his fists over his eyes and lets out a long complaining groan, then opens them to discover that it’s been several hours since he drifted off and now it’s not so lonely, after all.

“That’s so creepy,” he informs Schweini, who’s sitting on the coffee table, eating käsespätzle with his hands out of a giant bowl like popcorn, and has apparently been watching him sleep for who knows how long. If it weren’t for the persistent, barely-numbed ache gnawing at his leg and the fact that the TV is now off, he’d think he was still dreaming -- but he’s not, and when Schweini says “Here, catch,” and throws a greasy noodle at his face, it hits him right between the eyes.

“Fuck,” he says, and wrinkles his nose, pawing at his face again, this time to the tune of Schweini’s laughter. “Your aim is shit,” he says, popping it into his mouth in blatant, shared disregard of the diet rules and making an appreciative noise despite himself.

“We can’t all be Mr. Best Young Player,” Schweini says, shoving more pasta in his face and not bothering to finish chewing before he goes on. “Are you going to hog the couch all night?”

“Yes,” Lukas says promptly.

“Lazy ass,” Schweini says, and throws another piece at him.

He’s awake enough to bat it out of the air, if a little too woozy to catch it; awake enough to be able to tell what Schweini’s up to, and awake enough that it makes a little coal of affection catch fire in his stomach, the smoldering heat of it tugging his lips into a smile. Dragging himself upright in the corner of the couch, careful not to jar his injured leg too badly, he holds out his hand. “Give me that,” he says, because otherwise he might say something too embarrassing to live through, “unless you came just to eat it at me.”

Schweini sticks out his tongue but digs a plastic fork out of the back pocket of his jeans and stabs it into the top layer of cheese before handing the bowl over. “I would have brought beer, too, if you were more fun,” he says.

Lukas makes a scoffing noise at him through a too-big mouthful of cheese -- it’s hot enough that Schweini can’t have been watching him sleep like a creepy stalker for too long, all gooey and buttery and delicious -- but lets him get away with it because he’s leaning over to pick up the piece Lukas had knocked out of the air, then getting up to throw it out. “Get me some water instead, while you’re up,” he says.

“Your servant,” Schweini says sarcastically, but he heads for the kitchen and Lukas hears the fridge open a minute later.

“I like that,” Lukas says, when Schweini comes back, sitting on the arm of the couch so that he can reach down and steal some more spätzle over Lukas’s shoulder.

“Like what?”

“My servant.” He elbows Schweini in the ass, Schweini flicks his ear, and it quickly devolves into a short tussle that ends with Lukas’s water spilled all over both of them, the bottle knocked across the room, and the spätzle somehow miraculously safely on the table. His ankle is killing him, but Lukas looks down at Schweini sprawled out panting on the floor next to the couch, his t-shirt soaked through and stuck to his chest, and doesn’t care. He even manages to not care that he missed the game, that he’s gonna miss _weeks_ worth of games, that they won and will win without him and he can only watch on TV, replay after replay of Mark and Roy doing what he can’t. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey, yourself--” His voice squeaks into nothing as Lukas reaches down and tweaks his nipple, not even all that hard.

“Thanks,” Lukas says, before either of them can ruin the moment, such as it is.

Schweini’s vice grip around his wrist, keeping Lukas’s fingers safely away from a second attempt, isn’t quite holding hands, but it’s something like it. “Fuck you,” he says companionably, and a few seconds later, when Lukas is just starting to relax into the comfortable silence, “do you really?”

“Huh?”

“Like it,” Schweini says.

“Like _what_ ,” Lukas says, tugging at his hand, but Schweini’s not letting go and he can’t get away, not without making a big deal of it.

“You know,” Schweini says. When Lukas edges himself up on one elbow to glare down at him, he grins, crookedly, and adds, “Having a _servant_ ,” in a tone so ridiculously sleazy it would be hilarious if it didn’t make Lukas blush so hard.

“Fuck off.” He tries to yank his arm away again but can only manage to grab hold of Schweini instead, so that they’ve got each other tight in some weird kind of standoff that is now definitely not like holding hands. What’s worse, when Schweini’s fingers brush across the inside of his forearm, just above his wrist, they hit a strangely sensitive bit of skin and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from embarrassing himself. “Are you offering?” he challenges.

“What if--” Schweini pauses to lick his lips, and it’s just enough for Lukas to see right through him, right through all the bravado, with the sort of blinding clarity that usually only comes to him on the pitch, “-- what if I was?”

“Maybe,” he says, although he can still feel his face burning. “If you were.”

“Okay,” Schweini says. He uses his grip on Lukas’s arm to pull himself up to his knees in front of the couch, water dripping from the hem of his soaked shirt onto the floor. Lukas jerks his eyes back up and catches him blushing, just a little, a brush of red high over his cheekbones, and it’s -- nice. Really nice. “Lie back.”

A little warily, Lukas turns loose of his arm and lets himself sink into the corner of the couch until he’s propped up half-sitting again, reaching behind himself to adjust the pillow so it doesn’t dig into his back. “Hey, if you’re my servant,” he says-- and Schweini’s eyes darken just the tiniest bit, sending butterflies twirling madly down through Lukas’s stomach-- “shouldn’t I be giving the orders?”

“Shut up,” Schweini says, leaning in and kissing him when he can’t stop himself from laughing, pressing him into the couch. It takes Lukas a minute to get with the program, but Schweini’s still the best kisser he knows, and he’s willing to let it go for this, especially since once he does shut up, Schweini’s hand finds its way under his shirt, stroking along the waist of his shorts.

This is slower than they usually go; if Lukas hadn’t seen that blush, that split-second of uncertainty, he’d be sure Schweini was just teasing him to get revenge, but he doesn’t think that’s what this is. He reaches up and ruffles his hand through Schweini’s hair instead of complaining, the bleached strands soft and ungelled, and sighs into his mouth. “‘s good,” he mumbles.

“Yeah,” Schweini says quietly, leaning back just enough for them to breathe better, but not so far that they can’t kiss again between each breath. His hand creeps south slowly enough that by the time he finally gets it under the waistband and around Lukas’s dick, he’s already hard, the first drops of precome smearing over Schweini’s thumb when it grazes the head. “Hey.”

Lukas swallows down a moan, the last bit of it shivering out in his voice anyway. He loves Schweini’s hands maybe too much for his own good, and even more when they’re on him like this. “Mmm,” he says, and then, wondering if maybe this is really about _that_ , if Schweini _does_ want him to tell him what to do, “...you can keep going.”

His own voice doesn’t sound particularly sexy to him, but he can see the effect in Schweini’s face, in the slight tightening of his grip, and _that_ shoots through him, sinks its claws into him.

“Poldi,” Schweini says, kissing him again and then again, a quick one-two, “Luki-- can I, I want to--”

“Whatever,” Lukas promises, maybe a little rashly. “Anything.”

“Yeah, okay.” Schweini tugs Lukas’s shirt up a little with his free hand, the side of his thumb scraping up Lukas’s abs and making him shiver. He lays his hand flat on them, his palm hot. Lukas flexes under it and Schweini laughs with him, quick and rushed, then shoves Lukas’s shorts down around his thighs. 

Lukas’s cock jumps in Schweini’s grip as he watches: the sight of Schweini’s hand around him, even when he’s being an ass and just holding him, fingers curled tight around the base of his shaft but not moving, it does things to him. They’re usually in too much of a hurry for him to just watch like this, both of them too hungry for it even after almost four months of seeing each other every day to wait and take it easy. So, if this is what it means, if this is what Schweini wanted, or wanted him to want, or whatever, he thinks he kind of likes it. “Go on,” he says, trying for somewhere between encouraging and suave and failing completely as Schweini bites his lip again and then, instead of jerking Lukas off, leans down suddenly and licks him, a broad stripe up the side of his cock.

His tongue is soft and slick, his breath hot on Lukas’s wet skin, like nothing he’s ever felt, and Lukas nearly comes just like that. He chokes on air, grabbing onto Schweini’s shoulder and digging his fingers in as if he might fall through the couch or something, barely able to hold still and not knock his ankle around. They’d never done this before, never talked about it -- Lukas had never even really thought about it before, not with Schweini; all the cocksucker jokes had only been jokes, something from some other reality. “Shit,” he gasps, when he has enough breath for words again, “Oh my God.”

“Is it--” Schweini says, looking up at him a little furtively. He’s blushing again, but right now Lukas can barely tear his eyes away from his mouth, from the way his lips are wet and pink and just a little parted, from the way he can see just a flash of tongue.

“Do it again,” he says. “Please.”

It’s just as good the second time, even though he’s ready for it -- he can’t stop thinking _that’s Schweini’s mouth_ nonsensically, the words skittering madly around his brain -- and then Schweini flicks another nervous glance up at him, changes his grip a bit, and lets the head slide up over the flat of his tongue and into his mouth. He only takes the first inch or so, but when he sucks, a little tentatively, his tongue curls against the underside of Lukas’s dick in just the right way, his lips tightening up, and it feels so good -- Schweini _looks_ so good, on his knees like that-- that he barely gets out “I’m gonna--” before he’s coming, right there, right in his mouth, the whole of it so overwhelming that he can’t hold back a second longer.

Schweini’s eyes go wide but he doesn’t move, doesn’t pull away, not even when Lukas smooths his trembling hand over Schweini’s shoulder -- fuck, he’s probably left bruises -- until it stops shaking quite so badly, then raises it to his cheek, brushing over his face, touching his lips where they’re still stretched around Lukas’s dick. “Oh my god,” he repeats, quietly, feeling a smile start somewhere deep inside his chest and just rise up irrepressibly until he’s grinning like an idiot.

Schweini grins back -- around his dick, which looks kinda silly -- but then he’s pulling off and letting go, and the slide of his lips over Lukas’s oversensitive skin turns his laugh into a weird little hiccuping moan. He swallows and it jolts up Lukas’s spine like lightning. “Wow,” Lukas says. “I-- uh, do you want me to…?” although he doesn’t know whether he could manage his ankle on the floor like that, and his own mouth feels strangely, scratchily dry.

“I already,” Schweini says, “you know.” He gets even redder as Lukas’s eyes drop involuntarily to the front of his jeans, the big tent, the slowly-growing damp spot there.

“Oh,” says Lukas. Somehow that’s really hot, too, and the tiny bit of shame that had been creeping up on him over lasting all of five seconds into his first blowjob vanishes entirely under it. “Wow,” he says again.

“Shut up,” Schweini says. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, starts to lean in, then hesitates. “I’m gonna kiss you.”

“Okay,” Lukas says.

 

**_19 december 2007_ **

“I could wish Jogi coached Bayern,” he says to Miro, after the game. Not in the tunnel, he’s not that crazy, but in the lockers, under the cover of the noise of everyone else giving Luca the afterparty that Lukas will freely admit he deserves. Polish can only hide so many sins from so many people, and mutiny isn’t one that Lukas really thinks he can risk being caught in at the moment.

Miro gives him a quick half-smile, the one with that rueful little quirk that makes it impossible to hate him even from the bench. He pats Lukas on the shoulder, his hand lingering on his back just long enough to somehow pull off companionable and understanding instead of condescending. “You did good today,” he says, shrugging out of his jacket and folding it neatly, “you know that.”

“I know,” Lukas says. He knows. But two assists aren’t four goals, and they aren’t going to get him back onto the field, back into the starting places. Not ahead of Luca while he’s in form like this, and Lukas isn’t and hasn’t been all year. He yanks off his shirt, scrubbing a hand through his hair. It feels rude to complain about it more to Miro, considering he’d come on for him and done better, for once, so he tamps it down into the rest of the growing creep of _not good enough_. 

He jostles Miro deliberately with his shoulder, instead, when he’s got his shirt half-over his eyes and can’t see it coming, laughing as he staggers and almost falls into Franck, then even more as he untangles himself, spikes all mussed up, and gives Lukas his best disappointed-father look. It’s gotten better; he must have been practicing. 

“We’re good together, too,” he says, “that’s all I mean.”

Miro raises a pointed eyebrow at him, then relents, shaking his head. “Maybe Klinsi will see it here the same as last year.”

“Maybe.” But that’s next season and next season is too far away; the thought of the whole rückrunde on the bench crawls on his nerves, even one where they stay on top of the table the whole way through, all the way to of a mountain of silverware. Miro seems to live on a different time scale than he does, with more patience than God gave a saint -- Lukas doesn’t altogether understand it, but there’s times he’s been thankful for it. Maybe more than thankful, sometimes, but he doesn’t like to dig into his feelings about that too much; Miro’s got what he’s got, and Lukas has what _he_ has, and it’s good. He’s happy, even if he needs to remind himself of it sometimes.

“Listen,” Lukas says, shaking off his bad mood with some effort, “do you want to go to the Christkindlmarkt in the Marienplatz tomorrow? Bring Sylwia and the kids and we can all get through the Bavarian-ness together. I went last year with Schweini and I think I can still taste the lebkuchen.”

“It does all get a little much sometimes, doesn’t it?” Miro says, his voice quiet, as if saying that’s as much treason as questioning the coach, and who knows, maybe it is. But December still makes Lukas miss home, either way, and the same must be true for Miro, because he nods. “Sure-- I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“Great.” Lukas slings an arm around his shoulders for a quick hug, then heads off to the showers, offering Luca and Fips each a high five on the way past and meaning them both.

He has the showers to himself, everyone else still celebrating the win, and the herbstmeisterschaft, all over again, for good measure, so he takes his time, setting the water as hot as he can stand it and scrubbing down as if he’d played a hard 90 minutes instead of less than 30. He’s got his face turned up into the spray, eyes closed and washing the shampoo out of his hair, when the water suddenly goes ice cold and he stumbles backwards out of it with an entirely undignified yelp.

It’s Schweini, because of course it is, standing just far enough off to the side that _he_ wouldn’t get splashed and smirking like a jackass. “Jesus,” Lukas says, snagging his washcloth in one finger and snapping Schweini in the side with the tip, just on the principle of the thing. “What the fuck was that for?”

“Talking about me where you think I can’t hear you,” Schweini says, turning on the shower next to Lukas’s -- to a sensible temperature, Lukas notes, readjusting his own to something less arctic -- and ducking under it. “And giving stupid interviews.”

“When was I talking about you?” Lukas says. He doesn’t want to say anything about the interview, because he _knows_ it was stupid, and suspects it may have been partially, maybe mostly, his own fault for letting himself get too frustrated and led in stupid directions by stupid journalists, and to top it all off it had only come out that morning and he hadn’t expected Schweini to see it until at least tomorrow, safely after the game, safely into winter break. That’s a fucking mess.

“Just now,” Schweini says, giving him a sideways look that Lukas realizes, a slightly sour feeling curling inside him, he can’t entirely interpret. “Maybe the rest of us can’t speak Polish, _Lukasz,_ but I think I can recognize my name when I hear it.”

Lukas shuts his mouth on an automatic _don’t call me that_ , turning the water up hotter again instead. The tension it had finished soaking out of his shoulders before is entirely back, knotting up his spine in uncomfortable snarls. “I told him we went to the Weinachtsmarkt last year and I remembered my way around,” he says, trying not to sound too short about it. “In case he wanted to go with Luan and Noah and Sylwia. And we talked about Klinsi coming here next year and Jogi staying with the national team.” 

He doesn’t add _is that okay by you?_ , but Schweini hears it anyway, judging by the little, stubborn, pinched frown he gets between his brows. “Fine,” he says.

“Fine,” Lukas agrees. He reaches for his shower gel and scrubs himself over, using the friction of the washcloth to help himself get warm again.

“So you’re going with him,” Schweini says, after a few uncomfortable seconds.

“That’s right,” Lukas says. “Tomorrow.”

There’s another silence, the roar of the showers doing less than nothing to cover it up, and then Schweini tosses his own washcloth to the ground and turns to him. “Are you mad that we don’t -- don’t go clubbing together, or do commercials?” he says. “Or that we didn’t go to the damn Christkindlmarkt this year? Or that I’m not Ribéry or Klose--” he stops, shaking his head. “I can’t do anything about Hoeneß or Hitzfeld, fine, but I don’t know what you want from _me_.” He laughs a little, wiping his hair out of his face where the water’s soaked into it and made it straggle down almost to his eyes, but it doesn’t sound funny at all. “ _Do_ you want a divorce?”

“No.” But that’s not quite right. It’s closer than what the stupid fucking journo had baited him into saying, the whole divorce thing closer than he knew, enough to make his career, to set him up for life if Lukas had given that other game away instead of blundering through into this mess instead. “Shit,” he says under his breath, because he can’t believe they’re doing this now, here, in the middle of the shower, with most of the team having a party fifty meters away. He can think -- has thought of, repeatedly -- a hundred better ways to almost get busted in the showers with Schweini. This is somewhere way in the basement of that list, halfway to hell. “I’m not mad.”

“You’re not happy, either,” Schweini says.

“On the bench every week, why should I be? But that’s not because of you.”

“You said it felt like a trap.”

“What did you want me to tell them?” he says, rounding on Schweini because he desperately doesn’t want to listen to the thread of truth in the words, clear as day even in Schweini’s mouth: that sometimes Bayern is a trap even more than the media is, and Schweini _is_ Bayern, and Lukas is stuck in both, out of place and useless, and doesn’t know how to get out of any of it. “Should I have told them we don’t go out because we stay in bed? That I like your stupid haircut even more because Hoeneß hates it? That the image they’re trying to sell me with is dead wrong because I’m--”

“Shut up!” Schweini snaps over top of him, so loud that Lukas does, glancing nervously at the shower door -- but it stays shut, safe, and eventually he has to look back at him. 

There’s something hurt and opaque in Schweini’s eyes, something that Lukas put there. He wants to look away again, but he forces himself not to. “I’m not mad at you,” he says, distantly horrified at how easy it would be to say _but_ at the end of that sentence. “Schweini,” he says instead. “I’m not. I’m just -- it’s not easy.”

Schweini watches him in silence. That look doesn’t leave his eyes; Lukas can’t tell if he just doesn’t believe him anymore, or if he’s unhappy that they both had always thought that it _would_ be so easy, that the two of them would always fit together, would always be the answer to everything, and now that’s all falling apart. Fallen apart, maybe. “Yeah,” he says finally, which answers nothing. He lifts his hand a little, as if he were going to reach out and touch Lukas, then stops, takes a rushed half-step forward, and kisses him instead.

It’s a bad idea, the worst, but Lukas can’t shake the feeling that if they don’t, they’ll both say things -- he’ll lead them into saying things -- that they can’t take back. He thinks Schweini knows it too, because the kiss is hard, desperate, leaving Lukas’s lips feeling bruised and sore, but his hand settles on Lukas’s hip anyway.

Lukas starts to pull away, but Schweini catches the back of his head with his other hand, resting their foreheads against each other. “They won’t come yet.”

It’s a peace offering, or a test, or both, and here’s the real trap: Lukas doesn’t want to leave. He wants something else, but he doesn’t want to give this up, either; he doesn’t want to _give up_ at all. So he kisses Schweini again, half-missing and planting it on the corner of his mouth instead, and puts his hands on him, running them both up his back, slick with shower water and tense with the game.

“You like my hair?” Schweini says, after a long moment they probably don’t have to waste.

Lukas swallows his laugh, not trusting it to come out right. “Yeah. I like your hair.” 

“I like my hair too,” Schweini says, as if it’s some big secret, and that’s too much, Lukas is laughing anyway, his arms hooked around Schweini’s shoulders, leaning into him, the solid, hard, familiar planes of his body more than enough to hold him steady. 

Schweini slides his hand around from Lukas’s ass to his dick, cupping him, squeezing gently just the way he likes until Lukas gets hard under his touch, his laughter easing off into quiet pants. “We’re going to get caught,” he says against the side of Schweini’s throat, just under his ear.

“No we’re not,” Schweini says.

 

**_12 may 2009_ **

“I thought maybe you’d have packed up already,” Basti says from the living room.

Lukas pauses a moment, arm deep in the refrigerator, then shakes his head and pushes some old boxes out of the way. He still has -- yes, in the back, one lonely bottle of Basti’s Paulaner left over. He grabs it and a bottle of juice for himself and closes the door on the pile of mostly-legal takeout. They’ll probably order in something new, if Basti stays, so it doesn’t matter that he has no idea what’s in each of them.

By the time he gets back, Basti’s on the couch, sprawled out to take up full half of it, flicking through channels on the TV with his back to Lukas, the volume muted. He pauses on a rehash of the game, clips stitched together: a very nice pass, two assists, a goal. A commentator silently talking with an edge too much surprise about Podolski’s soaring recent form.

“Here.” Lukas plops the beer onto his shoulder from behind him.

“Thanks,” Basti says. His fingers brush over Lukas’s as he takes it; he drinks first, a long, thirsty swallow, and then leans back, looking up at Lukas upside down.

“I’m not gone yet,” Lukas says.

“I know,” Basti says. “I didn’t mean it that way.” He doesn’t say how he did mean it, just sighs and sits back up to drink again. Lukas shifts around the couch and sits down next to him, shoulder to shoulder. Their bodies still form one solid line like this, when they sit together; Basti still puts an arm around him, even if he doesn’t pinch Lukas’s cheek or try to stick a wet finger in his ear like he probably would have done a couple months ago.

Lukas puts his feet up on the table and lets himself relax, falling back into the deep, soft leather and the half hug. “You should turn it up,” he says, “let me hear some Bavarians saying nice things about me for once.”

“Greedy guts,” Basti says, but he does, and they watch for a few minutes until it continues on to the day’s other games. Listening to people rhapsodizing about Džeko and his braces is considerably less entertaining; Lukas twists the cap off his juice and tosses it at the screen and Basti mutes it without asking. “I say nice things about you,” he says when it’s quiet again.

“Yeah.”

“So does the coach.”

It’s the closest they’ve come to really talking about this, about the cosmically, unfairly shitty timing of someone finally giving Lukas a chance to prove himself right after he’d given up on it ever happening, right after it was too late to take it back.. They’d yelled about it some in January, after Lukas had said _home_ about Cologne one too many times and Schweini had decided that he was done with being _Schweini_ and Lukas had been pretty sure that Schweini-call-me-Basti had meant that that meant he was done with Poldi for good, too. 

They’ve worked that out, more or less, and it’s not even weird between them anymore, so Lukas thinks they'll be able to survive going back to seeing each other seven times a year with a handful of dirty phone calls in between. But they haven’t really talked, because that would just lead to what-ifs, and between them they already have a whole mountain of those, piled up high and waiting for an avalanche. What if Buffon had tripped and fallen on his face, what if Lukas had gotten to earn his first Meisterschale instead of collecting it from the bench, what if the Euros hadn’t been a complete disaster, what if everything between them didn’t have to be a secret all the time, what if Lukas wasn’t leaving in June. What if they could have had more. What if this won’t be enough. It’s probably safer if they still don’t talk. “Yeah.”

“Sorry,” Basti says, not specifying what for. The table’s up on the TV now, Wolfsburg leading them by a scrappy margin but looking to make good, and he makes a face at it.

“Yeah,” Lukas says a third time, and Basti looks over at him and smiles, a little hint of Schweini-humor still lingering under the edges. “Maybe they’ll fuck up,” he offers, although counting on someone else to win the season never really works out for anyone, and they both know it.

Basti takes it as the olive branch it is. “Sure,” he says, holding out his beer and clinking edges with Lukas’s apple juice. “To fuck-ups.”

“Prost,” Lukas says, to see him smile again.


End file.
